Taymour Grahne Projects is pleased to present Arranging Flowers, a solo exhibition by American artist Gail Spaien, marking its inaugural exhibition at its new permanent space in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai. On show from 18 September – 20 November 2025, the exhibition introduces Spaien’s latest body of work to the region, bringing her lyrical approach to domestic space, floral arrangement, and visual perception into dialogue with new audiences.
Based in Maine, Spaien (b. 1958) has exhibited widely across the United States for over three decades. Her practice explores painting as a site of emotional exchange, where decorative elements, floral arrangements, and flattened perspective quietly disrupt domestic and pictorial conventions.
The works in Arranging Flowers create a disarming interplay between interior and exterior worlds. Scenes unfold with whimsy and clarity, drawing on a long-standing personal connection to place while conjuring an undeniable, yet alluring strangeness. Windows, tables, and vases full of flowers form loose
choruses of color and texture, leading the viewer’s eye across thresholds where the natural world coexists with carefully arranged domesticity. Yet, time and space are compressed in ways that seem to resist the usual visual laws of reality – and even, at times, the laws of physics.
Spaien’s compositions draw resonance from ikebana, the ancient Japanese art of flower arrangement, which harmonises natural forms with the spatial environment around them. In this exhibition, art and botany are placed in delicate conversation, elevating one another through formal clarity and emotional resonance. Her paintings offer interior worlds where one begins to question not only where these places exist, but how one might enter them.
In Waypoints, the interior is only implied as the viewer looks out onto a blue moon rising over the ocean. The foreground – potted flowers, blossoming apple trees, and a stone wall – mirrors the rhythm of the seascape beyond. Cascading shades of blue draw these elements together into a singular, harmonised space. The result is formal, serene, and intimate – steeped in the fleeting impermanence of beauty.
Throughout the exhibition, still lifes appear in the form of the set table – an anchor of domestic space, a site of human presence. In Habitat, a perfect circle of a table, covered in an intricate white cloth and dotted with ceramic vessels, hovers without legs or grounding. Ginkgo Leaves is similarly compositionally disorienting: a row of vessels lines the painting’s bottom edge, above which a single horizontal line serves as the horizon. Ginkgo leaves float above the scene. These works recall the surreal perspective shifts of Magritte’s The Portrait (1935) – and of other artists who have historically used the still life as a means of distorting perspective through the use of conventions associated with the domestic.
In Spaien’s practice, still life disrupts – rather than reinforces – conventions of stability. Pattern, textile, and flatness are recurring devices – not nostalgic, but intimate. Simplicity becomes structure. Her spatial illusions suggest the presence of others – people just left, or moments of shared silence – while also evoking solitude. There is an atmosphere of quiet observation and interiority in her work: a world of simple pleasures and subtle cues, where silence holds meaning, and the improbable blends with the probable.
The dreamlike nature and quiet logic of Spaien’s paintings construct spaces that feel imagined yet emotionally precise. They are not renderings of real places, but they suggest the deep familiarity of memory – or the suspended unreality of dreams.
This exhibition inaugurates Taymour Grahne Projects’ new space in Dubai and is Spaien’s first solo presentation in the region.
Spaien says: “This body of work is my optimistic way of connecting with others in the present moment. For me, making a painting is like arranging a bouquet of flowers; both are gestures of care and poetic reminders of a shared humanity. Showing this work in Dubai, a city where so many diverse cultures intersect, is a rare and exciting opportunity to step beyond the familiar frameworks of the Western art world and participate in a broader cultural dialogue.”
Taymour Grahne, founder of Taymour Grahne Projects, says: “Gail’s work creates space for reflection – on nature, memory, and the quiet rituals of daily life – which feels especially meaningful in the context of our new chapter in Dubai. With this inaugural show, we are looking to build deeper connections across the region by presenting artists whose practices resonate across borders and speak to the contemporary experience.”
Taymour Grahne Projects is expanding its international presence with the opening of a new permanent space in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai’s leading cultural district, in September 2025. This milestone coincides with the Taymour Grahne Projects’ 12-year anniversary, having been founded in New York in 2013. Over the years, it has built a reputation for championing critical dialogue, fostering cross-cultural exchange and nurturing long-term artist support.
Press release from Taymour Grahne
Image: Gail Spaien. Looking Out. 2025. 132 x 122 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Taymour Grahne
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